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100 thoughts on “Major snowstorm headed for eastern US”

Joe Romm says you can’t report this unless you have a Phd in climate science. Mann’s is in Geology from a school that doesn’t have a climate department.
I have had my tast of gorflakes and expect 5 more inches tomorrow.
We were lied to regarding snowless winters.
“unexpectedly heavy snows”
I also appears the tree huggers won the battle against road salt. Drive carefully. Your Prius has no brakes.

A scientist at the University of East Anglia has been questioned by detectives ­investigating how controversial emails were leaked from the campus’s climate research unit.
Norfolk police have interviewed and taken a formal statement from Paul Dennis, 54, another climate researcher who heads an adjacent laboratory.
The leaked emails from the head of the unit, Professor Phil Jones, surfaced just before the Copenhagen conference in December and caused a furore because they suggested that data which did not support theories of global warming was being deliberately withheld. Dennis denies leaking the material. But it is understood that his links with climate change sceptic bloggers in North America drew him to the attention of the investigating team, and have exposed rifts within the university’s environmental science faculty.
Can’t be true. They say it was hacked.

There is a whole lot of moisture with this thing. I’m sitting here in western NC and it started sleeting about an hour ago, but it’s just going to be a mix for us. Maybe an inch or two. If temps would be about 3-4F colder, this would break every snow record we have. 2″-3″ of liquid precip. is forecast.

And they just got a foot of snow in some places last weekend. They got a lot of snow in that region in 1996 but that was the first week of January. A “doozy” is right. BUT … the storm tracking 50 miles east or west can make a huge difference in snow totals. It can mean the difference between a dumping and a dusting or the difference between a dumping and a deluge of rain.

I feel bad for the rest of the southeast, and for innocent bystanders in DC, but I can’t help but think that Washington DC, home of the home of the never-ending snow job, deserves every flake that it gets. 😉

“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” headline was posted in the Independent newspaper in the UK on March 20, 2000.
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers.
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. (end)
Please, for the CHILDREN.
For those on the East Coast subjected to the storm, please save samples of the snow in jars and then put in them in the Freezer.
And, many years from now, your thankful descendants with great reverence will remove the jars, gather round them, and marvel at real SNOW.

MattN (15:39:59) :
There is a whole lot of moisture with this thing. I’m sitting here in western NC and it started sleeting about an hour ago, but it’s just going to be a mix for us. Maybe an inch or two. If temps would be about 3-4F colder, this would break every snow record we have. 2″-3″ of liquid precip. is forecast.
I am sitting in the central NC area just south of Jordan lake. We rarely get snow (once ever 4-5 years) and it never stays long. So far this winter, it has snowed twice and we still have snow from the last storm – amazing!

http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5749853/the-global-warming-guerrillas.thtml
Awesome article in The Spectator, Almost enough to warm the heart of us deniers
“Contrast it with wattsupwiththat.com, a site founded in November 2006 by a former Californian television weather forecaster named Anthony Watts. Dedicated at first to getting people to photograph weather stations to discover how poorly sited many of them are, the site has metamorphosed from a gathering place for lonely nutters to a three-million-hits-per-month online newspaper on climate full of fascinating articles by physicists, geologists, economists and statisticians.”

Couple of OT posts about Paul Dennis of CRU and oblique references to Big Oil swaying opinions.
Take a read of Climategate email 973374325.txt and follow the links. Here is part of it:
” BP, FORD GIVE $20 MILLION FOR PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
EMISSIONS
STUDY
Auto.com/Bloomberg News
October 26, 2000
Internet: [1]http://www.auto.com/industry/iwirc26_20001026.htm
LONDON — BP Amoco Plc, the world’s No. 3 publicly traded oil
company, and Ford Motor Co. said they will give Princeton
University $20 million over 10 years to study ways to reduce
carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. BP said it will give
$15 million. Ford, the world’s second-biggest automaker, is
donating $5 million. The gift is part of a partnership between the
companies aimed at addressing concerns about climate change.
Carbon dioxide is the most common of the greenhouse gases believed to contribute to global warming.
London-based BP said it plans to give $85 million in the next
decade to universities in the U.S. and U.K. to study environmental
and energy issues. In the past two years, the company has pledged $40 million to Cambridge University, $20 million to the University of California at Berkeley and $10 million to the University of Colorado at Boulder.”
Test question: Who’s in the pay of Big Oil?

Their must be some sort of AGW event in DC this weekend for us to get this much snow. Could Al Gore and Hansen be in town at the same time? One shudders to think of the devastation 😉 .
Jakers (16:13:48)
Typically, it tends to not be that cold in D.C. when we get big storms. You would think that they would come out of the northwest but storms from that direction tend to drop their snow in the mountains. Our killer storms are usually coastal lows that form over Cape Hatteras and move north. When I see a big storm down in the Texas area I start to worry. It moves eastward and gets out over Hatteras and that’s when we get a dumping. A few miles east or west can make the difference between rain and a foot of snow. The last one went straight out to sea and we only got a few inches, but south of here they had up to a foot. In fact the rain/snow line is just going to be south of D.C. this time, but not close enough to save us from this one. I’m over in Delaware this week at about the same latitude (and about 100 miles east) but we may get some rain before it switches over to snow here.

Hey, take is easy on us folks in the Baltimore-Washington area. This has already been billed by the Washington Post as a “historic” storm. (They went on to say it’s just like the one that hit us the week before Christmas.) Anyway, it seems we get these 2 footers about every 6 or 7 years, (except when we get hit more than once) and it was not many years ago the governement shut down for almost a week. Do you think anyone will notice that the DC is shut down?

A response for Andy, who wrote:
“Andy (16:21:32) :
Not to be too anal about terminology, but words matter. Doesn’t a Nor’easter come from the North East? Hence the name. Seems like the Weather Channel would know that.”
Actually, a Nor’easter comes up from the southwest. On the northern side of the storm, circulation around the low causes the wind to come out of the northeast, along with the moisture that, in the winter months, falls as either cold rain or snow. Hence the monicker, Nor’easter, which predates The Weather Channel by several generations of our east coast neighbors.
Those winds tend to be rather strong, too.

Henry chance:
There’s no such thing as a Phd in Climate Science.. yet. Apparently East Anglia will be offering such degrees later this year. There was a posting about this over on the ClimateGate site.
Perhaps Joe Romm needs some education.

>>Not to be too anal about terminology, but words matter. Doesn’t a Nor’easter come from the North East? Hence the name. Seems like the Weather Channel would know that.
No. A nor’easter is a low pressure storm that sits off the coast and rotates in a counter clockwise manner so the winds come in from the north east. It doesn’t matter where it comes from, it is a reference to how it manifests itself. The so called Perfect Storm of book and movie fame which practically breached the 9 foot sea wall in front of my old house was actually a joining of two storms, neither of which came from the north east but resulted in a horrific nor’easter.
I’m neither a scientist nor a weather forecaster but I have spent a lifetime boating off the north east coast of the US and been hammered by my share of nor’easters.

O/T The Low Countries just got lower
Anthony – Not sure if you are aware of the news from the Netherlands. The IPCC (in the 4th Assessment?) adding together two figures supplied to them by the Dutch (Below sea level and Susceptible to flooding) to put 55 % of the Netherlands below sea level (actual figure as stated by Dutch was 20%).
Anyway, their environment minister is none to happy

@ Andy (16:21:32) :Not to be too anal about terminology, but words matter. Doesn’t a Nor’easter come from the North East? Hence the name. Seems like the Weather Channel would know that.
Andy, you must not live in the Eastern USofA. This is the correct terminology for a winter storm that travels up the Atlantic coast in a northeasterly direction.
Depending on how much moisture the system sucks up from the Gulf of Mexico and the size of the cold air mass, courtesy of our neighbors to the north (I’m look at you, Canada) with which it collides, such winter storms can pack a huge whallop. Then of course, there’s the inevitable backlash of lake effect snow in areas south and east of Lakes Ontario and Erie as the storm system continues on its merry, northeasterly way toward the North Atlantic.
Good times! I’m headed to the grocery store soon.

Sean (17:04:11) :
Wasn’t the “President’s Day” storm about 6 years ago? I as in Ithaca at the time watching the snow pile up in Maryland, and Virginia and wishing we could get some in upstate NY. They had no idea what to do with all the snow so it too them weeks to clear the roads. I didn’t realize they came through as often as once every 6-7 years. Surely if they are that common they could make some plans for what to do with the snow!

Only two previous Winters have recorded two double-digit snow events in the same season. Looks as if we’re well on our way to the third such season. After this event, we can probably begin looking at this Winter’s place in the record books in DC.
And the overall pattern is favorable for more snow events over the next week or two.

I can assure you of major snowfall in NJ, simply because I am driving from central NJ to VT on Saturday morning. As such, I expect the storm will track a bit further north to increase the snowfall amounts and increase the driving hazard.
But, good truck, lots of winter driving experience and good skiing in VT. All that equals FUN!

RobP,
You are right, one of our big ones was the President’s Day storm. I have been in this area for 30 years now and I think this is my 5th or 6th major storm like this. I think the reason they don’t plan for these is its not unusual to have several years where we get less than 10″ of snow all year and then the heaven’s open up. It’s hard to plan for the variability. One note about “historic” weather events in the area. In the mid 90’s we had a huge Nor’easter that was followed a week later by 3-4″ of warm rain. The Potomac had a “500 year flood” and a small town called Point of Rocks, MD was inundated. The state allocated a lot of money to rebuild the town the following summer but in September the Potomac had its second “500 year flood” of the year. They took the money that had not net been spent, added some more to it and moved the town further away from the river.

L.Nettles.
Omigosh! (Superman Comics), Am I the only lonely nutter left? We can’t all be serious scientists. I do have one friend, but he’s a civil engineer and all he says in response to my opposition to AGW “science” is “WHY?” would they do that. A simple explanation,apart from scientific hubris and “follow the money” is beyond me.
Just love the discussions about science, even if I struggle to follow some of the arguments.

“Doesn’t a Nor’easter come from the North East?”
Wind direction….
“I am sitting in the central NC area just south of Jordan lake. ”
I went to NCSU, lived in Durham until 2002. We had some huge snows there in 2000 and 2001. 18″ on one of them. Set a single day record. The city basically shut completely down…

RobP (17:21:49) :
There have been a couple of them.this one is the one you’re probably referring to. There was also one in 1979 that closed the Washington beltway (and did a job on the whole northeast). I remember driving home on a one lane strip on the beltway that weaved back and forth around the abandoned cars in that one.

3 Feb: Skeptics turn up the heat
By Li Jing (China Daily)
Chinese scientists say severe weather conditions and the scandal surrounding a famed study has opened the debate on alternative causes of climate change. Li Jing reports ..
Chinese experts, however, have cast doubt on the link between CO2 concentration levels and the global temperature rise over the past 150 years, which has been the basis of arguments over carbon emissions reduction plans in recent years.
Ge Quansheng, vice-director of geographic sciences and natural resources research for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said he believes the IPCC may have exaggerated the impact of human activities because of the incomplete collection of climate data.
“The IPCC report offered no definite scientific basis for the sensitivity of climate change to atmospheric CO2 concentration, although a warming trend was witnessed in the latter half of the 20th century,” Ge wrote in a report published on Jan 15.
Many questions were not answered in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report, he wrote, such as how much does the natural cycle contribute to the global warming? And are man-made aerosols countering or worsening the temperature rise?
Norden E. Huang, director of the research center for adaptive data analysis at the National Central University in Taiwan, agreed that the IPCC was wrong to maintain the theory that CO2 levels are the controlling force in climate change, and said the world’s oceans play a much larger role in global warming. ..
Studies on air bubbles found in Antarctic ice core samples have enabled scientists to chart variations in the planet’s temperature and greenhouse gases over the past 800,000 years, he explained.
“Looking at the available ice core data, there is an almost perfect correlation between the temperature and CO2,” he said. “But the change in temperature has always preceded any increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2, so it is too arbitrary to conclude that most of the historical global warming was caused by changes in the levels of CO2.”
The rate of warming also remains a contentious problem, said Huang, who has provided a different interpretation for the same data used for the 2007 IPCC report.
In 1998, as chief scientist for oceanography at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the United States, Huang developed an adaptive method of analyzing non-linear and non-stationary systems inspired by ocean waves. “The world is non-linear, so any data analysis method with pre-defined base functions will never produce reasonable results for ‘trends’ such as climate change or the stock market,” he said.
The method received eight patents in US and was honored by NASA as one of the most important applied mathematics inventions in recent history. Using his method, and by separating possible natural climate cycles from the recorded changes in temperature, Huang said he found the rate of global warming is only half the alarming rate predicted in the IPCC report.
“My conclusion is that oceans play a dominant and controlling role in climate change over 10- to 100-year periods. This has not been paid necessary attention by the IPCC,” he said.
Global temperatures during the past millennium can be broken down into four cycles – 194 years, 116 years, 62 years and 21 years – and these show why the Earth has become warmer in recent decades, according to Qian Weihong, a professor of atmospheric science at Peking University and a renowned climate change skeptic.
The accelerated warming rate over the last 20 years is due to the combination of the four cycles, he said. Based on this belief, global temperatures could begin to fall from 2010 until 2030, when the natural climate cycles move into a downward curve.
Other scientists are also studying the impact of black carbon aerosols on the atmosphere. Aerosols are tiny articles suspended in the air that occur naturally from volcanoes, forests, sea spray and vegetation, and during dust storms and grassland fires. However, human activities also generate aerosols, including black carbon, which is the soot released when fuels like diesel, wood and coal are burned.
Most aerosols reflect sunlight back into space, thereby reducing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface and having a direct cooling effect.
Recent studies, however, have found that black carbon aerosols could be major contributors to global warming. Once in the atmosphere, black carbon absorbs sunlight and emits heat, but after falling to the ground it darkens snow and ice, which reduces their ability to reflect sunlight and accelerates melting.
Research published last December by NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences suggested black carbon aerosols have contributed significantly to the melting of the Tibetan glaciers, which explained why temperatures at the Tibetan plateau – known as the “third pole” by Chinese – have risen twice as fast as the rest of the world over the last 30 years.
Liu Hongbin, a senior researcher for the National Climate Center in Beijing, welcomed the debate on the causes of climate change. “It is meaningful for us to better understand the issue and take actions to adapt to change,” he said.
No one should embrace the IPCC’s conclusions as “the truth”, he said. “Science itself is not the truth but it offers the best approach to finally close in on the truth. The conclusions were all made based on the knowledge scientists had acquired by a certain point of time. They are far from perfect.”
The number of Chinese contributors to the IPCC’s reports has increased steadily from nine on the first assessment to 28 on the fourth, but the participation of climate scientists from China is still very limited, said Liu.
“The 28 Chinese scientists made up less than 2 percent of all contributors to the fourth assessment report,” he said.
One of the reasons is that climate data collected in China is not well received internationally. “The exposure of several plagiarism cases in the recent years has given Chinese scientists a bad reputation overseas. But it’s unfair for the vast majority who work really hard,” said Liu.
Most international scientists are concerned about the continuity of China’s weather data. Most of the country’s weather stations were only built after 1950, while most climate data collected before then was incomplete. But Liu insisted: “All available data from these weather stations is well verified and authentic. We are constantly improving data collection on climate change.”
Liu is now helping to recommend Chinese contributors for the IPCC’s fifth assessment, which is due before 2014 and is expected to take into account more of the possible natural causes of global warming.
Researchers will again be separated into three teams, with one group expected to address the physical science related to climate change, as well as look at aerosols, changes in sea levels and the carbon cycle. The final report will also have specific chapters that discuss the overlapping and interrelating factors of global warming, added Liu. “The aim is to get a more comprehensive and deep understanding of the issues surrounding climate change,” he said.
Huang in Taiwan also warned of the danger of global warming becoming a diplomatic issue.
“Climate change used to be a scientific problem. It was very much politicized at last year’s United Nations conference in Copenhagen,” he said. “Politicians sell certainty but we scientists live off doubt.”http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-02/03/content_9418037.htm

Nor’easters moving upstream from southwest coastal regions, spinning counter-clockwise as they advance, indeed do seem to blow down the Jersey Shore from New England environs. By analogy, the storm of Climategate material heading NE to Copenhagen last December seriously snowed in Al Gore’s Green Gang of Climate Cultists, who have yet to wield sufficient shovels to clear their Cap-and-Trade driveways. Not “shovel ready”, as a certain jack-in-office with his visage of pulled pork might say… meantime, kudos to Paul “the Menace” Dennis, who we’d like to think pressed a trillion-dollar Reset Button re-booting Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. at the last instant before Warmists’ coterie of nihilistic Luddite sociopaths fastened their kakistocratic New World Order on benighted citizens worldwide.

Baltimore is looking at up to 2′ of heavy snow with no melting. For once, the major weather services are being conservative. The last major snowstorm, they undercalled the snowfall, and, it took us by surprise.
No matter what happens, we’re going with the moniker “snowmageddon” around here. Things are being cancelled before the first flake hits the ground.

Highs rotate clockwise and lows counter clockwise. By looking at the globe on the credenza in my office, my Texas logic tells me that Greenland sux. The low is moving that directiobn as do dying hurricanes.
How are the hard core greenie weenies spinning this storm?
It appears to be shovel ready.

I am interested in the offered explanation of the term “Nor’easter” as being due to the direction of the wind. I was under the impression that it took its name from its movement up the north-east coast of the USA.
We are very aware of nor’easters in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia because one that comes up the coast is likely to hit both our provinces, though it can veer westward and just dump on Maine, or it can be blown east into the Atlantic and miss us all. But we will be watching this one carefully!
The good thing about living here is that snow is a feature of every winter, and the province is well equipped with trucks that plow off the snow while spreading salt and/or sand, so we are inconvenienced only temporarily.
An irony is that Americans complain about the cold air and bad weather going down from Canada, but we in the Maritimes generally get our worst storms from the USA!
More trivia. An old saying here is:
When the wind
Is from the east
Weather’s not fit
For man or beast.
(Storm winds come from the east or northeast.)
I really appreciate WUWT because it is like a large family of like-minded people scattered around the world. We learn so much more than just about AGW from reading postings here.
IanM

Looks like a reality check for all the politicians in Washington, DC.
The Spirit of the Universe definitely has a sense of humor!
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Sciences
Former NASA PI for Apollo

Sigh.. Yet another big storm passes us by.
Greetings from the forests of far northern Wisconsin where snowmobiling is life and a pretty good chunk of our economy. This year we have been really suffering as the AO put us under a force field of high pressure that pushes every big storm, like this one, south.
I keep looking at the 16 day GFS and there is just no hope of a ‘real’ storm north of Green Bay. We can’t even get a respectable Alberta Clipper. The AO models say it will ease a little soon, but so far nothing shows up in the forecast models as far as the high pressure backing off.
Q-1.. Will this hellish high pressure ever go away, or is it time to drop the plow off of the truck and store the snowmobiles? We can get snow as late as June, but by March 15th the sun gets so hot it melts 3-6″ a day and ends the snowmobiling season. Time is short.
Q2- Opinions.. how much of the hellish high is an AO phenomenon, how much can be attributed to ENSO or PDO ?

Quite Rightly (16:03:55) :
I feel bad for the rest of the southeast, and for innocent bystanders in DC, but I can’t help but think that Washington DC, home of the home of the never-ending snow job, deserves every flake that it gets. 😉
Far too many flakes in DC.

Roger Knights (20:39:01) :
Mark Walker (19:50:57) :
Once Brazil sets up its own climate panel, to whom will the US and the UK be sending all the money, and how will the IPCC be able to say that the sea is rising is India says their coastlines are fine, or that the rain forests are doomed if Brazil says they are fine, or the glaciers are melting if China says they are fine. What then if Russia joins in and says that, surprising as it is it is actually really cold.
It is not inconceivable that Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa could form the global warming equivalent of the Warsaw pact. They are all upset with the IPCC over misinformation (to put it lightly) in AR4.
That would be a real cold war, skeptics could be the communists (except they would keep their own money) and the warmist would be the capitalists (except that they would give away all their money).

I dunno. Looking at this storm, it looks like a ridge of high pressure is keeping it from making the usual beeline to the coast of the Carolinas. It looks like it is being pushed North up over Florida and Georgia and is being kept well inland at this point. It might slip up and over to the Carolina/Virginia coast but storms like this generally slip out at the border of the Carolinas, explode and then rake up the coast. If it stays inland, locations East of the storm will get rain and the snow will fall mainly over the mountains and spare the major cities like Baltimore and DC.http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/index_loop.php
It also seems to be moving slower than usual in the case of most storms like this.

First, the good news:
— the storm system’ll miss me so I don’t have to make repeated shoveling passes on the damn circular drive.
— it’s not a Spring event, which might have given rise to numerous tornadoes.
— for real, honest working people in the northeast, they may be able to leave work early Friday before the real snow arrives. Heck, some might even get to take all of Friday and enjoy a three-day weekend.
The bad news:
— all those self-important political and bureaucratic slugs will get to take a three-day weekend without a second thought (or maybe even a first thought).

@ Alan S – I think you have the responsibility to rain them in then.
——-
More seriously, in New England nor’easters are nasty. The air over the oceans is usually warmer than that over the land and so has more moisture content. It hits the cold air over land and dumps its load. Call it super-lake effect snow if you want to. We are going to dodge this one in MA, etc. Fine by me, but my son would love to make some more money with the plow he has on his F-150. Ever try to attach one of those to a Prius? Does not work well at all.

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. (end)
I’m afraid this ‘scientist’ airbrushed out the 1970s, when snow was indeed a rare occurrence. Christmas 1970 and one morning in May in about 1977/8 was the extent of it, until Dec. 1979 showed us again what snow was.
The 1980s had quite a few ‘snow fests’ in SE UK, whilst the 1990s were broadly like the 1970s. As were the 2000s. Until Dec 2009.
We’ll see how this prediction pans out, but I’d file it under ‘stretching data interpretation’ until shown otherwise………

Of course, as expected for TODAY february 5th…and as should be expected for march the 7th….wonder why?
Everybody knew it in the 19th century and up to now the farmers’ almanac and many people, except for the official meteorological “brave new world” science.

One snowstorm means nothing in the climate debate…but what does mean something is, temps at 14.000 feet globally are going up up up. Right now we’re seeing temps not normally seen until mid-April at this level of the atmosphere. Go to this site and click on 14,000 feet and see the data for yourself:http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Of course I’m sure some of the cool-aid drinkers will insist that some NASA technician has fiddled with the data– maybe even Jim Hansen himself! 2010 continues on track to be the warmest year on record…

The local radio reports that an 18-inch snowfall for D.C. would be only the second time on record that the city received such a large amount. And as we all know…..you’ll be seeing more of these huge winter storms as the globe heats up. We definitely have to do something about climate change. I’m getting tired of shoveling all this global warming…

In southern New Hampshire we’ve had snow-cover since early December, but it is pretty thin. The big storms slip out to sea to our south.
Fine with me. Deep snows make even little farm-chores a bother. However my son usually makes a decent income plowing driveways, and he’s not making much money this winter.
I wonder if anyone has calculated the increased “albedo effect” of having snowcover clear down to the Carolinas.
Grouchy old Yankees say, “The less work they can get done down in Washington, the less harm gets done to us up here.”

“R. Gates (07:02:22) :
One snowstorm means nothing in the climate debate…but what does mean something is, temps at 14.000 feet globally are going up up up. Right now we’re seeing temps not normally seen until mid-April at this level of the atmosphere. Go to this site and click on 14,000 feet and see the data for yourself:http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Of course I’m sure some of the cool-aid drinkers will insist that some NASA technician has fiddled with the data– maybe even Jim Hansen himself! 2010 continues on track to be the warmest year on record…”
R. gates, maybe it didn’t occur to you but the ocean warms the atmosphere not the other way round so the El Nino warms the lower atmosphere, is that a surprise? You’ve cherrypicked the only height where 2010’s signal comes out on top. Nice link, BTW, good Java visualization.
Of course I’m sure some of the cool-aid drinkers will insist that some NASA technician has fiddled with the data– maybe even Jim Hansen himself! 2010 continues on track to be the warmest year on record…

*********
Henry chance (15:33:26) :A scientist at the University of East Anglia has been questioned by detectives ­investigating how controversial emails were leaked from the campus’s climate research unit.
Norfolk police have interviewed and taken a formal statement from Paul Dennis, 54, another climate researcher who heads an adjacent laboratory.
*********
I think Paul Dennis is an occasional poster @ CA.
The guardian article shows a disturbing attempt of intimating that Paul Dennis is some kind of crook because he communicates with “denier” blogs! This is contemptible to the point of sickening.

JR ‘ But, good truck, lots of winter driving experience and good skiing in VT. All that equals FUN!”
This has been one of he worst ski years in VT since I sarted skiing again 20 years ago. Areas opened weeks later than usual due to warm temps and therfore no snow making. We have gotten one storm that dumped (supposedly 33 inches in Burlington but Stowe only got 6inches). The next storm was a rainy downpour.
March is usually a reliable snow month, but last year it just rained. No snow forecast from this noreaster in VT. Sunny day today and Sunday

Andy:
“Not to be too anal about terminology, but words matter. Doesn’t a Nor’easter come from the North East? Hence the name. Seems like the Weather Channel would know that.”
The prevailing wind in the UK is a “sou-wester” and it comes FROM the south west, so you seem to be dead right.

Dirk said:
“You’ve cherrypicked the only height where 2010’s signal comes out on top.”
Actually no I did not. From sea level up to about 46,000 is where 2010 has so far been a record year for global atmospheric temps…the whole troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling…just as predicted by all credible AGW warming models.
In regards to the “oceans warming the atmosphere”…well that is of course a gross simplification, as we know that all the energy really comes from the sun, and more is getting trapped at lower levels, hence the cooling of the stratosphere. The nice little blanket of CO2 and methane in the troposphere is getting thicker and thicker year by year, trapping heat at lower levels…and so the temps will go up up up down here, and down down down up there…basic physics and no conspiracies needed…

To clarify, a Nor’easter typically moves N or NE, carried by upper steering winds. The surface winds flow CCW, so areas north of the storm experience NE winds.
Just going from memory, multi-feet snows have occurred here in the mid-Atlantic states more often recently (since the late 1970s) than some decades before. Jan 1996 was perhaps the record snow event since the late 1800’s in western Md — up to 36″ in low elevations, 50″+ in mountains.
So there has been a moderate increase in yearly snowfall avgs from the late 1970’s to present. However, it only matches the snowfall avgs in the late 1800’s to ~1920, then snowfall avgs dropped off a bit for decades. Of course, there were occasional big snows like 1961.

R. Gates (10:00:06)
Facts about CO2:
CO2 it is not black, but trasparent and invisible
CO2 is the gas you exhale. You exhale about 900 grams a day of CO2
CO2 that you exhale is what plants breath to give you back O2 (oxygen) for you to breath. Then it is neither a pollutant nor a poison, it even rejuvenates!!!:http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1485258/carbon_dioxide_therapy_carboxy_therapy_pg2_pg2.html?cat=69
CO2 is heavier than air, it doesn´t fly up, up and away CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere, it is the 0.038 per cent of it, or 3.8 parts per ten thousand.
The atmosphere, the air you know, does not have the capacity to “hold” enough heat, it only “saves” 0.001297 joules per cubic centimeter, while water , the sea you know, has 3227 times that capacity (4.186 joules).
Would you warm your feet with a bottle filled with air or filled with hot water?
The so called “Greenhouse effect” does not exist, see:http://www.giurfa.com/gh_experiments.pdf
But if you have been cheated to the core and still believe in it, think the following:
Svante Arrhenius, the guy of the greenhouse effect, said he thought CO2 acted as the “window panes” of a green-house, but as its concentration in atmosphere it is just 3.8 per ten thousand, you would have a greenhouse with 3.8 window panes and 9996.2 empty holes

R. Gates (10:00:06) :
Dirk said:
“You’ve cherrypicked the only height where 2010’s signal comes out on top.”
Actually no I did not. From sea level up to about 46,000 is where 2010 has so far been a record year for global atmospheric temps…the whole troposphere is warming while the stratosphere is cooling…just as predicted by all credible AGW warming models.
In regards to the “oceans warming the atmosphere”…well that is of course a gross simplification, as we know that all the energy really comes from the sun, and more is getting trapped at lower levels, hence the cooling of the stratosphere. The nice little blanket of CO2 and methane in the troposphere is getting thicker and thicker year by year, trapping heat at lower levels…and so the temps will go up up up down here, and down down down up there…basic physics and no conspiracies needed”
***
Six months ago the AMSU anomaly was at zero and the mantra then was that a decade or more of flat to declining temps was way to short to contradict AGW predictions, but now a six month uptick is supposed to provide rock solid confirmation of those predictions. Get a grip!

Been snowing here in DC for 4+ hours.. luckily it’s still above 0C so not much sticking to the roads yet. Unluckily the latest estimate calls for uninterrupted snow over the next … 31 hours? (Clears out wax from ears) I heard that correctly.

Leon Brozyna (23:14:02) :
The bad news:
— all those self-important political and bureaucratic slugs will get to take a three-day weekend without a second thought (or maybe even a first thought).
That’s the good news out of this storm. The only thing that would be better would be if a mini “Day After Tomorrow” scenario developed which left the entire D.C. beltway encased in permanent glaciation. As a wise man once pointed out,
“No man’s life, liberty or fortune is safe while our legislature is in session.” — Benjamin Franklin
If the deadheads could be prevented from gathering to inflict more of their wonderful plans to fix the catastrophes they created by their previous efforts to remedy the catastrophes they created by their efforts to solve the problems they created by their previous efforts to…etc., the native resilience of the American people and economy might actually be able to pull us out of our present predicament. Unfortunately, their profligate schemes to exploit the greed of the populace to ensure they stay in power may have pushed us past a “tipping point”. Social Security has “unexpectedly” gone broke “much faster than predicted”, The National Debt has zoomed to a point where it can’t ever be paid offhttp://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/it-is-now-mathematically-impossible-to-pay-off-the-u-s-national-debt
It’s been a nice run but it may be time to gather round and sing “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish”

rhys jaggar[02:59:51
You said
“The 1980s had quite a few ’snow fests’ in SE UK, whilst the 1990s were broadly like the 1970s. As were the 2000s. Until Dec 2009.
I went back and checked the actual snowfall record since 2000 and found Dr Viner was wrong for 8 of the last 10 winters between 2000 and 2010. [Only 2002 and 2008 had no snow] according to this UK source http://www.richardjwild.co.uk/blog/category/uk-snow-news/

Well I am in the north of Scotland happily waiting to see what comes our way from across the Atlantic. Can’t wait, they got it all so wrong …. The grit supplies are at an all time low, they have followed the government’s minium amount needed to get through our non existent airbrushed out, so called winters. So now they have plundered their next year budget. All on the strength of recommendations that there would not be a hard winter from the met men.
There is a great line sung with fearsome tone ‘and sent him homeward – to think again!’

R. Gates (10:00:06)
Facts about CO2:
CO2 it is not black, but trasparent and invisible
CO2 is the gas you exhale. You exhale about 900 grams a day of CO2
CO2 that you exhale is what plants breath to give you back O2 (oxygen) for you to breath. Then it is neither a pollutant nor a poison, it even rejuvenates!!!:

You are right. Not only is co2 blameless, I think it is really a thoroughly wonderful molecule. I am trying to understand why it has been particularly singled out by the US gov’t for such special persecution. I will get back to you all if I figure it out. 🙂

Here is a nice description of the carbon cycle from a book a read a little while ago:

“As a plastic spoon is burnt, for example, the carbon atoms within it are incorporated into carbon dioxide molecules which are dispersed in the air. Let us think of the possible fate of one of these molecules. It may be absorbed by a nettle leaf, and the carbon atom may them be assimilated by photosynthesis into a sugar molecule, and thence through a series of biochemical transformation into a protein molecule within one of the leaf cells. This part of the leaf may be eaten and digested by a caterpillar of the peacock butterfly, and the carbon atom may end up in a DNA molecule in the butterfly’s body. The butterfly may be eaten and digested by a bird, and so on through endless food chains and carbon cycles.
The matter of any given carbon atom has the potential to be part of any one of countless millions of different forms, natural or artificial; it could be in a diamond crystal or an aspirin molecule, a gene or a protein, a mushroom or a giraffe, a telephone or an aeroplane, a Russian or an American.”

Well no wonder the hell they want to tax atmospheric co2! lol I believe this might be a “tax on everything.” 🙂 Zeke the Sneak

All this talk about Nor’easters, and don’t believe most of you live anywhere near the north east. I live about 45mins north of Phila and the Nor’easter that is currently dumping 18″ of snow on us right now came from the southwest. Hence the name Noreaster.. furthermore this is the 4th storm of this sort this year (last week was a nice 17.3″. (minor disclaimer) weather man nor scientist am I, Lived here most of my life!! fun times!! Global warming my ass!!

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